


Memory

by Embracingtheplotbunnies



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire, game of thrones
Genre: Anastasia - Freeform, F/M, Romance, fairy tale AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 18:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13082631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Embracingtheplotbunnies/pseuds/Embracingtheplotbunnies
Summary: Anastasia AU-Dany doesn't remember where she came from, or why she has strange memories she can't understand. But Jon needs a way to get his siblings out of the city and she might be the only chance he has.





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

> As promised from my tumblr, blue-roses-in-a-wall-of-ice  
> Based primarily on the stage musical that I saw on Broadway in June-*dies*. I don't think I've ever seen the movie? Or if I did it was so long ago I can't remember it. Any inconsistencies are mine.  
> Enjoy!

i.  
When she’s five years old, her grandmother gives her a music box. 

“What song is it?” Dany asks, watching the tiny dancer spin around inside. She’s wearing a light blue tutu with frilly white lace, like the one the snow queen wears in the ballet they go see at Christmas every year. There might be ballet dancers downstairs now, but she wouldn't know. Apparently she’s too young for the big parties. She gets too sleepy, and then she falls asleep on one of the settees and her older brother Rhaegar has to carry her upstairs. 

“It’s a waltz,” her grandmother Shiera says, pressing it into her hands and closing her fingers around it. There’s a three headed dragon on the top, the symbol of their house. The same symbol adorns the flags outside the palace gates and the tableware they eat off of. It means she’s special. It means that she’s a princess. Her grandmother starts humming, and after a while Dany starts humming along with her. 

Her grandmother picks her up and tucks her into bed as the music box winds down, setting it down on the night table next to her. “Why do you have to go back to Paris, Nana? You’ve only just arrived.” 

Shiera clucks her tongue. “Someday I’ll take you to Paris, little one-when you can stay up later. We’ll go to the ballet. We’ll go see the parades. We’ll go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and share crepes at a sidewalk pastry shop.” 

“Why can’t it be now?” 

“Ah darling, I wish it could.” She hugs her granddaughter close, pulls the covers up to her chin so she won’t catch a cold. “You’ll love Paris. I’m afraid that once you go, you’ll never want to leave-and what would your parents think of me then?”

“I can go with you. Rhaegar’s going to be the king anyway, when Father dies.” 

A kiss, this time on her forehead. “Which, bless their souls, we pray won’t be for a very long time yet. But right now you have to be a little princess. When I come back, then I’ll take you to Paris, Dany. I promise you.” 

She sits by her bedside and hums the waltz until Dany slips into sleep and dreams of dancing on a snow covered stage-and then she’s running down street after street, looking for something. She’s not sure what, but it wakes her up in a cold sweat. Shiera is already gone. 

*  
The years go by and her grandmother doesn’t return. Sometimes she sends Dany bits and baubles-a miniature replica of the tower for her bedroom or a prayer book that has the towering palace of Versailles on it, where the French royalty used to live. And then things get too dangerous. There’s talk of revolution in the air, talk of democracy and a constitutional monarchy, and a Great War. It’s not safe for Daenerys to travel out of the palace gates unaccompanied, much less over national borders. “You’re too precious to us,” her father says on her sixteenth birthday. “We couldn’t bear to lose you.” 

The revolution grows nearer and nearer, until she barely sleeps at night because she can hear the gunshots. Her older brothers say they’ll never reach her, that she’s safe inside the palace walls, but on nights when she doubts them she sleeps with the music box under her pillow just in case. And then one night a group of soldiers tells her family that they have to evacuate for their safety, because the revolutionaries are so close to the palace-and they’ll kill all of them, even Dany. Even Rhaegar’s delicate wife and his two children, the oldest a mere toddler. But it doesn’t take her long to realize that something’s wrong, when they lead them into a dark basement...and then start shooting. 

There’s lots of screaming and a blinding pain in her chest and then everything goes black. 

When the sun rises the next morning, the King and the royal family are dead. Princess Daenerys is nothing but a distant memory. 

 

I  
It’s the fifth time that Jon and Robb have been run out of work. 

They never try to, honestly. It just...happens. Usually because someone says something that they don’t agree with. Usually Robb is the one who responds. Jon’s given up on trying to hold him back, because too often he gets dragged into the fight too. Everyone says that the new Lannister government is the greatest thing that ever happened to the country, especially the capital city. They pretend that the Targaryens and everything they did, everything they were, is able to be swept away so easily under a rug of inconvenient truths. 

But they really need to stop now. They have siblings to take care of-siblings who won’t appreciate it if they don’t have the money for food. Sansa flirts with the officers from the compound nearby and Arya steals from rubbish bins when they get especially desperate. 

“I hate this city,” Robb mutters. They pass a street corner, where someone is burning an old Targaryen flag for warmth. 

Jon remembers it under the Targaryens, when they still called it King’s Landing. It wasn’t like this. Yes, there were still the same starving people on street corners-but there wasn’t an overwhelming fear to talk, or a need to listen in on the neighbors. There weren’t soldiers patrolling every block. Not for the first time, he thinks that they need to leave now while they still have a chance. 

He’s so involved in his own thoughts that he doesn’t see the girl until he almost runs into her. Her eyes are wide in her milk white face and she has the frightened look of a scared rabbit. “Sorry.” He brushes past her, trying not to make eye contact. He’s already impoverished. The other impoverished are the least of his problems. Look after each other, his father said before he died. So Jon will. He can’t afford to care about anyone else. 

A vendor nearby is hawking his wares, yelling about how he owns a piece of jewelry from the royal family. A lie, probably-all lies these days, about how no one ever really saw Princess Daenerys’s body and even now she might still be waiting in hiding, waiting until the time is right to retake her throne and the city of Lannisport with it. 

He doesn’t care anything about royalty, one way or the other. He doesn’t care who lives in the Red Keep. He only cares about what will get him money to feed his family. 

But he knows a long lost princess would fetch enough money for them to live in comfort for the rest of their lives. 

Maybe it’s this optimistic thought that encourages him to push through the crowd surrounding the stand. He can’t even see what he’s holding that well-it looks like a box, barely bigger than the palm of his hand but inlaid thickly with jewels in the three headed dragon of the Targaryen family. It’s probably worth more than everything he owns. 

He plucks the box from the merchant’s hand and runs, hearing people call out “Stop thief!” But he’s fast, faster than any of them as he hops over trash cans and ducks in and out of crowded pubs, shoving the box under his jacket until he can feel it poking into his stomach. He doesn’t look back for Robb; he just trusts that he’ll meet him back at the tenement. 

And all the while his mind races, tumbles, and seizes on rumors. A plan is beginning to take shape...and the box is the key to everything. 

 

II  
At first everyone thinks he’s insane. 

“That’s never going to work,” Arya says two nights later when he finally decides to share his plan with all of them, over a dinnner of weak soup that doesn’t fill any of them up. “You’re going to get us all killed.” 

“But just think about it. The Targaryens have a relative in Paris, an old woman named Shiera. She’s offering reward money for anyone who can lead her to information about her family. And they say that no one saw Daenerys’s body-”

“Listen to yourself! Of course she’s dead! They shot the entire family! Unless our princess is magical-”

Robb leans forward, the usual laughing look on his face completely gone. “What if it didn’t have to be her?”

“You two are delusional-”

“The theatre’s in shambles, there are plenty of actresses out of work. We do a little research, find the right girl and…” He spreads his hands. “We take her to Paris. We convince her grandmother, we collect the money, and we live in comfort and happiness for the rest of our lives.” Arya rolls her eyes. “No, think about it.” The youngest, Rickon, is barely six-too young to remember a time before the Revolution. “We could have a home. Food on the table. A patch of grass. Maybe a couple of servants-” 

They’re practically salivating but it’s Sansa who draws them back. “That’s a lot of ifs. We’d need the right girl-and the right transit papers-”

“Leave the girl to me,” Robb says, smiling the smile that ensures he never goes a Friday night alone. 

Jon says “I know someone who might be able to get us the papers.” 

And just like that, they have a plan.  
*  
Davos Seaworth used to be a professor, a low ranking member of the nobility-until even that became too dangerous. He wants out of Lanniport just as much as the Starks do. And he’s the only one who doesn’t think that Jon's head is made out of cotton. 

He also happens to know the Targaryens better than almost anyone. He’s a scholar of the royal family, researching their lineage for time out of mind. 

But even he says that the idea is ridiculous. “It’s dangerous.”

“Everything is dangerous these days. Doesn’t mean we let the fear control our lives.” 

“Finding the right girl to play your princess isn’t like finding the right fruit on the shelf-”

“How hard can it be? We teach her to dance, we teach her about her family, she becomes Daenerys. Easy enough.” At night he dreams about bathing in a tub of gold coins. “We have the music box-” 

“You’ll need a lot more luck than that. Do you pray, Jon Stark?”

Jon shakes his head. Maybe he did once, but now he doesn’t. If God existed then He wouldn’t have forced the Stark kids to grow up without a family when the bomb hit their apartment. He wouldn’t have made them starve and steal and lie just to stay together. 

“I'd start, if I were you. If you mess this up, you’ll lose everything.” 

“But if we pull this off, we have everything to win.” 

 

III  
There’s talk around town about Princess Daenerys. A rumor that’s she’s alive. 

Dany wants to laugh. Alive. As if. How could she have survived the shooting in that dim dark room, filled with the ringing of bullets and her mother’s screams and her brothers’ blonde hair stained red with blood…

But of course, that’s only a dream she has sometimes. She’s not a princess. Princesses don’t sweep the streets for long hours until their hands are chapped and raw from the winter wind. Princesses live in castles, not workhouses. 

She hates the soldiers. They prowl the streets in their red and gold livery, brandishing their guns and pointing it at anything that moves. Whenever she sees one, she hides. Especially when that soldier happens to be Jaime Lannister. He’s the prime minister’s son and he controls the city and everyone in it. 

She accidentally makes eye contact and the look in his eyes makes her heart leap in her chest and she practically flies down the street, opening the first door at random-where she practically runs into two women, who are both wearing ridiculously high heels and holding their noses up in the air like they smell something foul. 

“And I have an older brother named Visemon-”

There are two young men, too. She doesn’t notice them until one of them groans. “Viserys, not Visemon!” 

The girl sighs, a puff of air shooting in and out of her lungs. “If it’s so easy Robb, then why don’t you do it?” 

“Victoria, you know full well that I-” They notice that she’s there and they all stop talking. She can feel herself cringing inwards, unconsciously trying to make herself smaller. “I’m sorry, we don’t have any food to give you, you’ll have to beg somewhere else.”

“I’m not a beggar.” She turns to leave, but then she remembers: Viserys. She’s heard that name before. It’s familiar in a way that she can’t place. “Prince Viserys is dead. He’s been dead for a long time.” 

No one says anything for a minute and then the two girls flounce out, muttering. The boy who spoke-Robb-runs after them, pushing a hand through his brown hair nervously. That leaves just her and the other boy; he looks like a hero out of a gothic romance, with his raven hair falling over his eyes and his soft lips. He doesn’t look pleased to see her, but he’s not telling her to get out either. “The royal family’s dead. The Lannisters killed them.” 

“You believe that? You haven’t heard the rumors?” 

He shrugs. “Words are wind and the air is full of them. That doesn’t mean there’s any truth to them.” 

She shakes her head. “Why were they walking that way, with their noses up?”

He looks like he’s trying very hard to smile. “They were pretending to be royalty. Why? Did they not do a good job?” 

“I’m sure they’re trying but...they’re trying too hard. It’s more to do with the way they carry themselves. You can smell the money on them.”

“You know a lot about the nobility?” He sounds quietly skeptical but not disrespectful. 

“No more than most.” 

“A shame what happened to them.”

She nods. “Dangerous words to say, in a city like this.”  
“They were all killed. They were alone and frightened and they died in the dark. It doesn’t matter what your beliefs on the government is-they didn’t deserve to die like that.” 

She thinks about that and feels a dark place opening inside herself. She has to fold her hands together in front of her, as if that will keep it all from spilling out. “No. No they didn’t.” 

He takes a step closer to her, looking at her as if he’s worried she’s a bird about to fly away.Maybe she should. “What did you say your name was again?” 

“I didn’t. I’m Dany.”

“I’m Jon.” They shake hands stiffly, almost awkwardly. “Where are you from?”

“I...I don’t know.” 

His brow furrows. “What?” 

“I can’t remember anything from….before. I woke up in a convent, far from here, a few months ago. I don’t remember anything else. But...this isn’t the city I remember.” 

“Well, it never is.” Robb crosses over to the windowsill and picks up something small and blue, tossing it from hand to hand, and her heart stops. The music box. 

“Where did you get that?” She has to keep the awe out of her voice, as she plucks it out of his hand. 

He grabs back for it, nonplussed. “Why? What’s it to you?” 

She yanks it open and the sound shudders through her. There are only faint impressions that come back to her-a clean bed in a fancy room, wrinkled hands clutching hers, snow falling softly outside patterned glass-but it brings her to her knees. “A waltz.” Remember, Dany, she thinks. Try and remember. 

The boys are staring at her, openmouthed. “You know...if you’re open to the idea...I might know a way to get you out of here.”

She can’t help raising her eyebrows. “I’m interested.”

“It’ll be dangerous.”

“What’s not, these days?” 

IV

He knows, almost instinctively, that he could never find a better ‘princess’ than Dany. The girl might be an orphan, with only a handful of change to her name and no place to call her own, but she carries herself like a queen. She’s dusty and dirty and she takes three baths the first night she stays with the family, washing herself vigorously behind the modest privacy curtain until she finally steps out wrapped in one of Sansa’s old nightdresses, shivering in the cold. He feels her eyes on him at all times-watching, waiting. 

They’re all very quiet around her-Bran and Rickon play on one side of the room, whispering amongst each other, while Sansa knits in one corner and Arya watches the city outside another window. But she looks over the dusty genealogy tables he’s procured from Davos quietly and diligently, mouthing the names as she commits each of them to memory. Her hair is long and stringy, and it falls in her eyes. 

“Where did she come from?” Sansa asks as she puts away the last of the dinner dishes-not that there are many dishes to speak of. “How do you know you can trust her?”

“I don’t.” But he trusts her, all the same-he’s no stranger to the look of fear, to the way that even grown men shit themselves and children hide behind their mother’s skirts. He knows how it feels to be so frightened it’s a struggle to move, to breathe. She’s not just scared. She’s terrified. But she’s not the only one. “She might be the best chance we have. We have to let her try.” 

“If she betrays us we all die.”

“If anyone finds out about this we’re all dead anyway. Besides Sansa...she doesn’t remember anything. What if she really is the princess?” He knows it’s a long shot, all but impossible-but in the darkness he can’t help but hope. 

It takes him a long time to fall asleep that night. For better or worse, there’s nothing he can do about it now. 

*

The next day he, Robb, and Dany meet Davos outside one of the officers’ barracks. The air smells of their heavy, dirty coffee and it hurts his nose just to smell it. Dany shrinks away from every soldier that they pass. He hopes he hasn’t taken in a fugitive. Arya would give him hell for it. 

Davos looks Dany over cursorily. His brow is heavy and clouded and Jon can’t tell what he thinks about her. “Is this the lucky girl?” 

“You tell us,” Robb replies. 

“What’s your name, miss?” 

“Dany.” She holds out a hand for him to shake and Jon knows Davos must think the same thing he does-there’s something about her eyes that’s almost familiar. 

“You know what these boys are asking of you? You know how hard it will be? How dangerous? If they catch you, they’ll have you tried and executed for treason. And if you succeed...if you manage to convince the Grand Duchess Shiera...you’ll be living a lie for the rest of your life.” 

“She gets it.” Robb mutters. “No need to scare her off before we can even get started.”

“I’m not afraid,” Dany says in a steely tone that surprises them both. “I know the Lannisters are dangerous. But there are no Lannisters in France.” 

“For now,” Davos replies darkly. “Fine. Now all of you, stay close.” He ducks onto a side street, pushing his way through a group of peasants warming themselves over a pile of burning wood. “If you get arrested I won’t help you get out.” 

“He’s just saying that-” Robb begins, before Davos cuts him off. 

“I’m not. It’s not worth my life.” Jon can’t help but wonder, not for the first time, if he’s making a mistake. 

Davos deposits them unceremoniously in the ruins of what was obviously the backstage to a large stage area-one of the first things to be bombed when the revolutionaries took the country. It’s covered in dust, old cloths hanging over mirrors and a discarded hobby horse lying in the corner from some old production. But for Jon, it feels like home. For once, they’re alone-and about to pull off the greatest fake in history. 

 

V  
Dany learns quickly. 

Every day Davos brings her new books and the boys teach her everything they can about what it means to be royal. They teach her how to curtsy, how to recite the Targaryen family tree going back several generations, and even how to dance. 

It all feels like something happening to a different person-a different girl, born in a palace by the sea, with a horse named Balerion and a dog named Drogon. A different girl whose life was destroyed far too soon. But there are things that she knows that she shouldn’t-Balerion was a girl, not a boy. Her niece Rhaenys was three years older than her brother, not two. But it gives her a purpose and it keeps her warm and safe and off the streets. 

And the boys aren’t the worst company either. Sure, they’re loud and decorous and they swear worse than most sailors. But at least they’re sincere. 

Most nights she sleeps in the theatre at the end of the day. It’s far enough off the beaten trail that no one comes to bother her-but it’s not falling apart either. She likes to sleep in the seats-even now, their once plush velvet is still soft and warm. The royals used to come here to see plays, like the Nutcracker every December-and there’s something comforting about it, as if their perfume still lingers in the air and she can hear their laughter when the nights are coldest. 

Her dreams often wake her up in the bleak hours of the morning, shivering and shuddering, gunshots ringing in her ears and blood spattering her hands. People’s faces swim in front of her and she knows that they’re familiar to her and she loves them dearly, but she can’t for the life of her place them. On those mornings she creeps up into the catwalks and looks down at the stage, reading books in the early light or risking lighting one of her precious candles. Sometimes she even dresses up in the costumes-they’re old and moth eaten, but they still make her feel more like the princess she’s pretending to be than she ever does in her rough work clothes. 

Jon and Robb call her ‘your royal highness’. It’s for practice for all of them, so they don’t ruin everything in front of Shiera. Paris. Her breath catches just thinking of it. A city of starlight. A city where she will-maybe-find a home. If she works hard enough. If she’s lucky. 

One day, Davos says she’s ready to move on to the most important thing about being a royal. “There’s lots of dancing. I remember at the Targaryen court...well, the Queen loved her balls. She had different parties every month, different outfits...and whatever food they didn’t eat she would give to the poor. Say what you will about the Targaryens...but they did care about their people. The Lannisters are wrong about that.” 

Another impression, of a woman with a kind smile and long blonde hair, letting her run a smooth brush down the back of her neck. She was wearing a beautiful dress, glittering with icicles. Dany wondering why she couldn't go to the balls.

You’re still too young, Daenerys. Wait until you’re older. Their eyes won’t be able to leave you. 

A lump of feeling wells up in the back of her throat. “I thought the Lannisters outlawed dancing.”

Davos’s eyes twinkle. “Here, they did. But not in Paris.” He grabs an old record player and plays a quick, fast folk song. “Jon, would you like to teach her?” 

“Oh.” Jon’s cheeks color, but he steps forward good naturedly and takes her hand. At first their steps are clumsy and uncertain, but then they get the hang of the beat and then they’re whirling around the stage, laughing and smiling, not worrying about where their feet land, each trusting the other to carry them through. By the time the music stops, they’re both laughing and blushing in equal measure. 

They try again and again until they’re both breathless but she can dance a waltz passably. Jon is adorable whenever he gets too close to her; once a lock of his curly hair brushes her face and a spark of heat seems to pass through her. She wonders what she's doing. She knows this is dangerous. She knows nothing about him. 

And yet…

Robb and Davos keep talking but their voices gradually fade away into the background. Here’s him and here’s her, and that’s all that matters.  
*

 

It takes a couple of weeks for Davos to forge the papers. He disappears for long periods of time and comes back muttering darkly about the Lannisters, but eventually he secures them. She looks at her picture for a long time. It looks like her, but it’s not-the features slightly too sharp, slightly too small in her pale face. She wonders what happened to the woman whose identity she has stolen. Is she still alive, or was she killed in the Revolution? Did she support the Targaryens, or did she want them to fall as fervently as everyone else? 

Now she’ll never know. 

Things move fast after that. They set a date. Sansa fakes an illness to make Daenerys a beautiful blue dress to make her ‘look like a princess’. Robb and Jon are agitated and she jumps easily at every sound. They’re so close. Either they succeed now or they’ve lost their chance for good. 

On the night before they leave she and Jon are sitting outside the theatre together looking out at the city. They often find themselves spending time together; it’s not something they plan, but they’ll spend their time in a warm companionable silence. But tonight neither of them want to be still-adrenaline courses fast and furious for what will happen the next day and no one can sit still. Robb disappears as soon as it’s dark to go to a bar; he asks Jon and Dany to come with him, but both of them refuse. They’re nervous enough, even without the alcohol. 

“Come on,” he says, jumping down into the half dirt/half gravel streets. There’s an air of danger-and of fun. “Let’s go say goodbye to the city.” 

He shows her a redbrick house on a muddy river, now falling in on itself from disuse and one explosion too many. This is where he grew up, where he and his siblings were born, until war and revolution tore it all apart. Then he shows her the streets where they had to fight to make a living-they run down alleys and duck through broken windows, finding small crevasses where they can sit and look out at the night. It’s a city she’s never seen before, a city of people fighting to survive who haven’t forgotten who they are and who they could be-an old man sits on a street corner, surrounded by children, telling them fairy tales, a Lannister soldier gives a young woman a new pair of shoes because the soles on hers have nearly been worn through, a group of boys splash and play in the river, even though it’s bitterly cold. There’s a wistful look in Jon’s eye, the look of someone leaving home and knowing that he may never see it again. 

She feels a tinge of longing, but not for places exactly. Not for this bridge, or this frozen pond. She seeks what she can’t remember-blurred hands, picking her up and spinning her around a crowded room. A horse with fine jet black hair that she always braided. A soft voice, the sparkle of rhinestones in dim electric lighting, a dirty basement, something slamming her to the ground, a pain in her side so bad she thought she would die-

Jon’s hand is in hers now, and he looks terrified. “Is something wrong, Dany?” 

She shakes her head. “No. I’m just...it’s just nerves.” Tentatively she moves closer into the circle of his embrace. His heart beats under her fingertips, fast and sure. I’m going to Paris, she thinks. They’re going to Paris. 

They sit together and watch the sun set and the city go to sleep around them, not trapped in memories for once but back in the here and now. 

VI  
They leave before first light the next morning and assemble at the train station half awake, drowning in luggage. 

“Papers?” The guard seems almost bored as he looks back and forth from the papers to them and the papers again and then writes something on it lazily. He sniffs, rubs his nose, and waves them through. “Platform 10.” 

It takes all the control Jon has not to run for it. They’re in the clear, at least for right now. No one suspects them. Thus far, they’ve managed a clean escape. 

The train isn’t much, still decked out in the red and gold of the Lannisters with lions painted on the windows, and they’re not alone. There are others too, some wearing the well made clothing of the aristocrats, others carrying no more than the clothes on their back. There’s a feeling of camaraderie between them, no matter who they are-they’re fleeing a country that no longer wants them, a city that they can never call home. Something in his heart shudders. 

Rickon climbs onto his lap and goes to sleep, Sansa gets out her needlework, Arya stares out the window, Bran pulls out a book, and Robb tries to sleep as well. Davos is talking to someone a few rows behind them and Dany’s right next to him, softly mussing Rickon’s fair hair. “Who do you think that I am?” The question takes him aback. “Who do you think that I am? Do you think I’m the princess?”

Sometimes he wonders, with her regal bearing and the things she knows that no one else does. But that’s not what he says. “I think you’re Dany, and you can be whoever you want to be.” He can’t get attached to her; he’s here to collect his reward and then leave. That’s it. 

Something in her hard gaze softens. “I don’t know who that is.” 

“You’ll find out. You have time.” 

“I don’t want to start a war-”

“So don’t.” 

“But if the Lannisters come after me-”  
“We’ll protect you.” It’s simple-he doesn’t even need to think about it. She’s one of them now and they would protect her as fiercely as if she shared their blood. 

“Papers!” A soldier’s heavy boots sound over the wood floor and there’s a collective breath of fear drawn out of everyone on board. Jon hasn’t prayed in a long time, but he does now. He hands the officer his papers and Rickon’s and barely gets a glance; the soldier takes longer with Dany. “What does a pretty thing like you have to run from?” She only stares at him defiantly and his pulse jackhammers. Finally, the soldier hands the papers back and they get off and then the train starts moving, leaving behind everything he’s ever known. 

Well, not everything. The important thing-his family-is still alive and well. As long as they’re together, they can handle what comes next...whatever it might be. Whatever waits for them in Paris. 

Next to him Dany mutters under her breath again and again “I am the Princess Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of the late King Aerys and his queen Rhaella,” like a mantra. 

Or a prayer. 

*

The journey seems interminable. They sleep, they play cards, they look at mountain vista after vista until all of them seem the same. 

Then, a few hours from the French border, they’re stopped and boarded. These soldiers aren’t like the ones in Lannisport, soft and slow-they’re angry and they wave their guns around as they gesticulate wildly. “Fugitives!” they scream. 

Robb nudges him. “I think that’s our cue.” They rush for the exit and jump down onto the cool spring grass, running as fast as they can for the edge of the wood and safety. Gunshots fire behind them, loud in the preternatural stillness, but capture is worse than death and they keep running. He worries the officers might give chase, but they don’t; when they regroup in a sunny clearing with a small brook they’re alone. Nothing disturbs the ambient noise of nature-no whispering, no guns. 

“What now?” Sansa asks, as Arya takes a handful of water and wipes it down her face. 

“We’re not too far away,” Davos says, massaging his knee that still aches from landing wrong when he jumped off the train. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.” And everyone’s too tired to argue. 

*

The world….feels more French the farther away they get from Lannisport. Inherently, Jon knows there’s nothing more French about the green trees or the clear springs, until they pass through the little villages that can’t be anything but French. There are French signs, French fashion...and every road leads to Paris.

They’re on the road for days and nights that all bleed into each other. Every morning they wake up in a different place, full of different sights and different smells-and with each day they make it less and less likely that they’ll ever go back to Lannisport. Back home. Some things will never change. 

Sometimes Rickon asks him what they’re going to do when they get to Paris and he doesn’t know what to tell him. Will it be better than Lannisport? Yes. It has to be. There’s no other choice.

Dany’s nightmares increase in force the closer they get to Paris. The first night she wakes them all up, screaming-but by the third night she’s learned to control it, even when her chest is heaving and her thin nightdress is soaked through with sweat. They’ve already suffered too much to have her interrupting their sleep. So when they do come, as they always do, with their sprays of blood and screaming, she muffles her tears with a pillow and cries herself back to sleep. 

One night there’s a knock at the door and she draws her knees up to her chest instinctively-until the door opens and she realizes it’s just Jon. “It’s a dream. Just a dream.” 

“I know. It just...it felt so real.” She can still feel their blood on her hands. Her heart is beating out of her chest. 

Jon sits down on the bed next to her and she’s grateful for the warmth that radiates out from him. “I saw the Princess once.” 

This surprises her. “You never told me.” 

“You never asked.” He clears his throat. “I was much younger, maybe seven or eight. There was a parade, in Lannisport-of course, it was King’s Landing back then. They cleared the streets. Everyone was so excited. Sansa was jumping around, hoping to get a glimpse of the queen or the princes-they were supposed to be the most handsome men in the world, even though she was much too young to know what that meant. Of course I didn’t expect anything, but Robb grabbed my hand and dragged me through a hole in the crowd until we were suddenly right in front of the security guards...and we saw them. The king and the queen, acting like they loved each other when maybe they didn’t...Rhaegar and Viserys, Elia and the children...and then there was Daenerys. A little girl, no more than seven, but already she sat like a queen. There were people calling out to her but she wasn’t afraid. She just smiled and waved, like this was an everyday occurrence. I don’t know. Maybe to her it was. And then she looked...right at me. And I bowed, because I knew then that this truly was our princess. In that crowd of hundreds, thousands of people, she smiled at me.” 

A cold feeling trickles down her spine and she winces-and then she’s back there again, the sun beating down on her hair as the cries of the people surround her and Rhaegar’s hand is on her shoulder and he’s standing so proudly…

And it all clicks into place. “I remember that. I remember you.” But she never thought she’d see him again. He was one in a crowd of thousands and they were separated by rank and status and futures. 

It’s like a floodgate has broken and she can’t hold back the rest of the slew of memories-her family, her nana, the Christmas tree covered in lights...and then soldiers, curfews, shouts in the night, someone telling her “wear your nicest we’re getting our pictures taken”, her coat heavy with gold coins sewn into the lining, Viserys telling her that they were planning to escape, and then the room filling with smoke and the bullets ripping through their bodies one by one. 

Running and running and running until her body nearly gave out, desperate to escape the memories of what had just happened because maybe somehow that would make it not true. Lost, alone, and frightened-so frightened. The last scion of House Targaryen. 

Almost. She drew in a shuddering breath. 

Jon’s arms come around her, soft and strong. She relaxes into his grasp, feeling his hair tickle the back of her neck, his hands sliding up her back, coming to cup her cheek as he closes the distance between them and they kiss in the dark room. When they break apart he looked somewhat abashed, somewhat mystified. “My queen.” 

“I remember. All of it. I...remember.” She’s not sure whether she wants to laugh or cry, so she does none of it. She only grabs for the music box and winds it, careful to make sure he doesn’t stop holding her, always anchoring her to the here and now as if without him she might float away into nothingness. 

The waltz fills the night air and something in her broken heart finally seems to fall back into place. Nana, I’m going home, she thinks. 

VII  
Another day and night, and still no one comes. 

Shiera supposes that’s better than when people come, the people who bluster and lie and say that of course they’re Daenerys. She’s the most common one, probably because of the rumors-those awful rumors, giving her hope when she knows the rest of her family is dead and buried-but every so often someone will show up claiming to be her son, or her grandson, or even Rhaenys or Aegon. 

Sometimes she’s tempted to pretend, even to herself. But she always knows. They’re always imposters. The Lannisters wouldn’t let a member of the dead dynasty live.Except for her, but that’s only because she’s so far away that they can’t get to her. She should have taken them all with her the last time she visited-the princes, Rhaegar’s children, her darling Rhaella...and little Daenerys. She misses her most of all. 

Give it up, old woman, she thinks. They’re dead. They’re all dead. No one is going to come back. The ache is physical, because she knows it’s true. She has to dissolve her stupid delusions, has to stop hoping. They’ll never come to her and she’ll never be able to go home, not even to bury them. 

“Close the gates,” she tells Lily. The girl nods and leaves and she slumps back into her seat, the fight going out of her. She’s never felt so old, so worthless. So hopeless. 

Lily runs back inside, her face ashen. “My lady...there are visitors.”

So late? “Are we expecting anyone?”

“No, but-”

“Send them away. I’ll have no more of this silly princess hunt. Tell them I’m not going to reward them for their troubles.” 

Lily leaves. Shiera knows she’s being harsh, but she can’t afford to get her hopes up. Not again. 

And then, five minutes later, Lily comes back-holding something that Shiera never expected to see again. “My lady, they told me to give you this. The girl begs five minutes.” 

She should say no. She has to say no. And yet...she winds the music box up carefully and the notes tumble out, one after the other, a river of sound. “Five minutes.” 

*

They’re grubby and disheveled, probably on the run. So many are these days. She always distrusts the fancily dressed ones first, because there’s no way the Lannisters will overlook clothes like that. And there’s...a lot of them. Two boys, two girls, two smaller boys...and then the newest girl to masquerade as Daenerys. At least this one’s hair and eyes seem natural. She doesn’t greet them; instead she looks back down at the music box. 

And the girl steps forward. “You said you’d take me to Paris, Nana. I didn’t think I’d have to get here on my own.” 

Shiera briefly considers playing along. “Why have you come? Is it money you’re after, or fame, or glory-”

“No. I want a family. The only family I have left.” 

The words taste bitter because she’s heard them so many times before, so many women taking advantage of an old woman’s grief and generosity. “Then I think you had best go elsewhere.” 

“Please,” she whispers. “I remember when you gave me that music box. There was a party, and I wanted to join the dancing but I was too young so you put me to bed...You thought that, once I saw Paris, I’d never want to leave. Maybe you were right about that. I haven’t seen enough of it yet.” 

For the first time, Shiera meets her eyes. 

And just like that, she knows. She doesn’t know what sets this one apart, but this one is her granddaughter. She’s sure of it. 

Somewhere in her chest, her cold broken heart begins to beat again. 

VIII  
Jon barely sees her after that. Shiera won’t leave her side, and she accepts the Starks almost instantly as her extended family. She takes the girls shopping for perfume and new dresses and takes them to performances at the ballet-even Arya is enthralled. She buys Bran and Rickon new toys and books and she outfits them all in the upstairs of her fine mansion. It’s not as big as some of the others they see on their way to church or their boat rides alone the Seine, but it feels like home. 

He and Robb have an impromptu job of driving off the paparazzi that gather on the front steps like gnats. Shiera loads their pockets down with gold and jewels but she doesn’t make them leave; she says the big family is giving her hope she hasn’t had in decades. 

And Daenerys is back to being a princess. She’ll never sleep on moth eaten theatre seats, never want for food and water, never have calluses on her hands from forced labor. She’ll sleep on thousand count thread sheets, listen to her subjects and...maybe one day...challenge the Lannisters in their seat of power. There’s no room in her life for a boy like him, who up until recently barely had two coins to rub together. So he withdraws, because he knows it’s the right thing to do. 

Then one night she seeks him out. “Why have you been avoiding me?”

“I haven’t-”

“You’ve barely said two words to me since we’ve arrived. Have I done something to upset you?” She sounds frustrated, maybe even a little frightened. 

“No, of course not.” You could never, he wants to say.

“Where do you go now?” 

“I don’t know. I suppose we’ll stay here until we get back on our feet….your grandmother has been more than generous-”

She takes a step closer to him and puts her hands on his shoulders, as if she wants to shake him back to how things were and how they should be. “I haven’t changed. I’m still the girl you know.” 

“You’re a princess. I’m not a prince.” 

“You idiot.” She steps closer and kisses him again, passionate and full of promise. “Of course you are, to me. And that’s all that matters. I..my life without you would be-”

“Hard.” 

“To put it mildly.” They smile at each other and it’s tentative, but it’s still there. “I’m scared, Jon. I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t know what I’ll do if the Lannisters come for me. But I do know that wherever my path does take me...I’d like you with me.” 

“Dany, you could have whoever you wanted whenever you-”

“But I don’t want them. I want you.” And for that moment, even though the world in front of them is so uncertain, he feels perfectly safe. He loves her and she loves him. Whatever comes next, they can face it together.

“Well, you’re already my princess-”

“Someday, I’d like you to be my husband.” Her fingers ghost down the skin of his face and she holds her hand to his heart, feeling its frenetic beat.

“It would be my greatest honor, your Highness.”

“Call me Dany,” she whispers. 

And he does.


End file.
